NEUROCIRCULATORY ASTHENIA

The careful examinations of thousands of soldiers by skilled medical observers during the past few years have served to bring into prominence various clinical manifestations which might have remained unemphasized or even undiscovered in the casual routine of peace-time practice. The necessity of eliminating the unfit from service and of detecting even latent defects of function has served to focus attention on many items of seemingly trifling import which military experience has gradually brought into more deserving prominence. This is particularly true of abnormalities, or perhaps one should call them inferiorities, of the nervous and vascular apparatus.

In this way a group of symptoms has been designated as neurocirculatory asthenia, sometimes as the "effort syndrome." This has appeared not only abroad but also in our American military camps. In the words of members of a cardiovascular board of the Medical Service of the Army, the signs are increased pulse rate,